


you don't have to be alone

by towokuwusatsuwu



Series: Femslash February 2018: Tokusatsu Edition [2]
Category: Kamen Rider Kiva
Genre: Again sort of, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, F/F, Kiva Makes Everything Hard, Second Chances, Secret Relationship, Sort Of, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13592829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towokuwusatsuwu/pseuds/towokuwusatsuwu
Summary: Megumi finally tracks down the Queen Fangire, only life is never as easy as it should be. She could never hurt Mio anyway.





	you don't have to be alone

Sometimes, Aso Megumi thinks she has been chasing Fangire forever and will spend the rest of her life doing it. Her grandmother and her mother had set upon this path; her grandmother had died during the creation of the IXA suit and her mother suffered its flaws in an attempt to make use of the one asset humans had on their side that Fangire lacked. Megumi had taken the mantle upon herself for similar reasons; her family had been in this war before she was born and she wants to do their legacy proud. Maybe she also has a bit of a grudge herself. She wants to pay the Fangire back for the pain and suffering they had brought down on her family, and killing the Rook Fangire was hardly enough to inflict the blow she wanted.

Which is why she finds herself chasing the Queen down empty grimy back alleys.

Megumi expected a fight when she found Queen destroying one of her own, rainbow shards of glass raining down upon them both. In the back of her mind, Megumi knew this meant the Fangire in question had committed the ultimate sin and had fallen in love with a human. She had spent years training specifically to deal with Fangire, and that meant learning about their customs and their hierarchy. It meant knowing exactly what the Queen’s job was.

She aims her gun ahead of her and a bright blast lights up the alley just enough for her to see when it connects with Queen’s back. The blow sends her reeling but not enough to make her fall and Megumi grits her teeth even as she quickens her pace. She has to catch up.

“Come back here, scum!” Another blast careens off a wall. “You aren’t getting away this time.”

“Leave me alone! I was only trying to do my job!” The voice is shrill and desperate and fearful.

Good. She should be fearful. Megumi had been able to take down Rook, a feat no other human could lay claim to even though her mother Yuri had managed to injure him. The Checkmate Four are fearsomely strong and taking one of them down deserved a high honor.

She aims another blast and catches Queen in the shoulder this time. She still doesn’t stop.

It takes another three blasts for her to bring Queen down and it’s in an empty pavillion, sending her rolling down a set of steps as her Fangire form fades away in a cloud of soft blue smoke leaving only her human form behind. Megumi leaps the stairs in only a couple of bounds; IXA largely protects the shock to her joints and muscles and she lands in a perfect crouch only feet away, watching as Queen scrambles to her feet.

“I told you I’d catch up to you eventually and you’d regret it when I did.” Megumi prepares to switch modes so she can battle, but then Queen turns to look at her.

Her hand freezes, her eyes widening behind her mask.  _ Suzuki Mio is the Queen Fangire? _

“Please don’t hurt me. I haven’t hurt any humans!” Mio throws her hands out in front of her, and Megumi can see the tattoo dark against her fair skin. “I was just handling one of my own!”

Suzuki Mio. The woman Megumi had just seen the previous week on a blind date set up by her friend Eritate Kengo, who insisted she spent too much time between work and hunting to have a normal life. Megumi had every intention of blowing the date off until Mio walked up to her table.

Mio was shy and quiet but she had opened up once Megumi really started talking to her and she had maybe been more than a little bit smitten with the other woman by the time she picked up the check. They had talked on the phone a few times since then, but work and hunting had kept Megumi from having enough time to schedule another date. Huh. Maybe Kengo is right and she does need to cut back on both a little just so she can have a life.

And now her date is standing in front of her with her cloak torn and her makeup smudged and her hair pulling out of the intricate little braids through it, begging for her life.

_ How am I meant to do this? _ Megumi bites down hard on her bottom lip. There had been people she never expected to be Fangire reveal that they were truly the stained glass monsters intent on feeding on human life until the expanse of humanity was left as nothing but hollow glass, but no one had told her that someone she cared about might be a monster.  _ How am I meant to kill her? Mio is sweet. Mio is kind. Mio would never hurt anyone… Would she? _

She has a mission. Taking down the Checkmate Four would make that mission far easier. Cutting off the head would ensure that the hydra that is the Fangire race would falter and fall and there might actually be a chance to end their chokehold on humanity. Megumi had already proven it was possible with her own two hands. But what now?

“You’re a monster,” she says, but her voice almost falters and she bites down on her tongue, tasting copper in her mouth. Mio or not, Fangire are still monsters and she has to do something about this. She  _ has _ to. “You don’t deserve the privilege of begging for your life.”

Mio sobs loudly and openly and she stumbles; the heel on her shoe is broken, making her all the more unsteady on her feet. “Please! I’ve never hurt a human before and I never would. I was just here to deal with one of my kind, just like you do. Please don’t kill me!”

Megumi doesn’t have a choice, right? She has to do this. She has to end Mio’s life if only to protect the human lives she had long ago deemed worth protecting. Mio is the Queen, and the only one who stands above her is the King; even Bishop doesn’t hold the same title or power as the ruling pair of Fangire. Taking down Mio now would ensure that she could finally make some headway on this, but… How could she ever do such a thing to Mio?

Instead of switching modes, Megumi powers down the suit. The IXA suit retracts into the IXA knuckle around her hand and she sighs, scrubbing a hand over her face. Though Nago and Shima-san had both suggested she wear something to disguise her face in the event the suit was forcibly removed, she hadn’t taken it. How many Fangire were going to risk discovery by coming after one of Japan’s most successful up-and-coming models, after all? She wishes she had worn a disguise now. She doesn’t know how hard this is going to be.

She could fight Mio and beat her easily, especially if Mio is fighting in her human skin instead of her Fangire skin, but she doesn’t want to do that. Aozora has long since had the goal of defeating the Fangire and Megumi had joined them to carry on the family tradition, but at some point she has to stop and make choices for herself. Her brother would have given her hell if all she did was follow behind other people. Megumi had never been a follower; she had forged her own path more often than not no matter what that meant.

“Megumi?” Mio runs her fingers through her hair, holding it back out of her eyes as she stares at her, and Megumi feels a lump form in her throat at the way Mio says her name. But she nods, because she doesn’t want to lie to her. “You… You’re IXA? Megumi, I… I didn’t know. I… Aren’t you going to fight me? You chased me all this way, I thought you…”

“I did, but… I don’t want to fight you anymore. I didn’t even realize it was you until you changed back.” Megumi pulls at the bottom of her shirt, pulling invisible wrinkles free of the fabric before she slowly walks closer to Mio. “I can’t kill the Queen Fangire if the Queen is you.”

Mio stares at her for so long that Megumi expects her to either bolt or attack her while her guard is down, fight or flight in the presence of someone who can easily be deemed a predator. Instead, she falls to her knees, wrapping her arms around herself. “You aren’t going to kill me.”

Megumi stops in front of Mio, feeling like the monster she thought she was hunting. “I can’t,” she says again, because it’s true. “And I don’t want to hurt you. I never would have if I knew…”

When Mio stretches a quivering hand out toward her, Megumi hits her knees on the pavement— hard, she’ll have bruises and scrapes and her agent will be pissed but she doesn’t care— and pulls Mio forward into her arms, pressing her face into her hair. Letting things come this far makes her feel awful in more ways than one; she could have easily left when she realized who Mio was but now Mio knows the truth, and what will become of her after this?

“I’m sorry for scaring you. I was just… I was just doing my job. I didn’t stop to think about who you were. I didn’t think about anything,” Megumi says, and it’s true. It’s true, and it hurts.

Mio’s arms dart around her neck and squeeze and Megumi holds her, holds her through the sobs that shake her body and through the pain and the fear that still must have a tight grip on her heart. How awful must it have been to only show up to do her job as the Queen and to have someone chasing after her like this? Ironic that she had been doing the very thing Megumi was paid to do each night— Can she even care about a human? Is she allowed to do that?

“I’m sorry. This is probably making things harder for you. I just… I know why you have to do it. Taiga isn’t happy about it, but I understand even if I don’t want to. You can’t just sit back and watch my kind kill other humans,” Mio sniffles into her neck.

_ Taiga… King Fangire? Surely that must be who she’s talking about. That would make him… _ “I feel like I should apologize for Kengo setting us up on that date now. I… If you’re Queen then you have a King and I’m pretty sure that means you don’t really have time to date around.”

“What?” Mio leans back to look at her, bemused and so, so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her. “No, Taiga and I aren’t married and we don’t have plans to be. You don’t have to apologize for that. I… I went on that date because I wanted to go on that date, but I just never imagined this would be the way we met again. You watched me kill someone, that’s so horrible—”

“I’ve killed more than my fair share of your kind so you don’t have to worry about me being horrified by it. I just… I’m so sorry for everything. For all of this,” Megumi says.

Mio sniffs and wipes a stray, gray-tinted tear off of her cheek, sitting back on her knees and resting her neatly folded hands in her lap. “I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t think you’d want a second date with the Queen. Is it weird to date after you fight each other?”

“You’re worried about… Oh.” Megumi shakes her head, smoothes out her expression the best she can even though a smile tugs at her lips just the same. “I don’t think it’s normal but nothing about this is normal anyway, so I don’t really mind. Did you want to go on another date?”

“Well, I really enjoyed the first one. I was just nervous about calling you again.” Mio hiccups and laughs a little, and though the sound is strained it’s a start.

It can’t possibly be normal, not all things considered. Dating a Fangire goes against everything Megumi agreed to when she stepped foot into Aozora, and she can only  _ imagine _ how awful Nago will be if he ever finds out. But… Maybe she doesn’t care so much about that.

“I don’t think my people will be happy about me dating a human, but if no one else finds out that you’re IXA, maybe I can get away with it for just a little longer. I don’t know what happens after that,” Mio admits, but Megumi can imagine it won’t be anything good for her.

“Well, if your people end up making it hard for you, then I can always protect you. You know what IXA is capable of and it belongs to me, so it’s not like there will ever be a time when I don’t have it with me.” Megumi tucks a stray lock of hair behind Mio’s ear, brushing away a stray tear herself before offering Mio a tentative smile. “This isn’t really how I envisioned asking you on another date, but if you really want to, then so do I. Maybe a movie night?”

“I’d offer to take you to a movie right now but I’m a bit of a mess.” Mio looks down at her hands, streaked with her makeup and still slightly trembling, and Megumi’s eyes are drawn once more to the dark tattoo on her skin, the one that must have been hidden with makeup.

“That’s fine.” Megumi helps her stand, keeping her steady when her broken heel makes her wobble. “If you want, we can just go back to my apartment and watch something. You can use my shower and borrow some of my clothes. I don’t really mind.”

Mio giggles up at her, and it sounds warm and true and it makes Megumi’s heart flutter in her chest. “Okay. My shoe’s broken, though, so… It might be easier to walk in Fangire form.”

Megumi lets that one sink in before nodding and in a soft swell of something almost like blue smoke, Mio transforms back into her Queen form. She’s blue and there’s bits of other colors in there, interesting shapes and armor and the pearl in place of an actual face, and Megumi can only see so much in the dark but she thinks Mio’s Fangire form might be beautiful. Everyone else she knows would have shied away from this if not run in outright horror; she just offers Mio her arm and tries not to look the least bit put off by any of this.

But Mio takes her arm and leans her head on Megumi’s shoulder, and even if the odd shape of her face digs into Megumi’s shoulder a little harder than it should, Megumi brushes it off as something she can learn to get used to before turning them toward her apartment. If they’re lucky, they’ll have a safe trip home. If not, she has IXA, and Mio has her own power. One way or another, they can have each other’s back.

She’ll still chase Fangire, of course. She’ll just be chasing Mio in a different way.


End file.
